Family Law

Friday, July 27, 2012

Kansas Drug case keeps on growing...

I'll just say it right now. College kids smoke pot. This is not the news of the century. Four out of every five people that come into my office with misdemeanor pot possession charges looking for a criminal defense lawyer are either in college or are college age. It is a great privilege to be a basketball player at the University of Kansas, however, it is not completely unheard of for a college kid to act like a college kid. Regardless of if they play basketball or not.

This is why I don't understand why the idea that some college kid may have bought pot from a drug dealer is a big deal. I think the real story is the size of this bust. We are talking about quite a lot of drugs and quite a lot of money. The charges just seem to keep on coming and this case keeps growing as if to no end. Here is the article in the Kansas City Star about the new charges and the size of the bust.

WICHITA -- Nearly
three dozen people were indicted Thursday for what federal prosecutors
say was a ring that supplied about $17 million worth of “high-grade”
drugs to customers, including marijuana to members of last year's
University of Kansas basketball team.

The U.S. Attorney's office
for Kansas said the 101-count indictment involves 35 defendants, most of
them from Kansas. The defendants supplied drugs to residents in Johnson
and Douglas counties, prosecutors said.
At a hearing last month,
assistant U.S. attorney Terra Moorhead said one of the defendants, a
32-year-old Overland Park man, supplied marijuana to multiple members of
the Jayhawks' 2010-11 basketball squad. The university would not
comment on the case then and officials with the school did not
immediately return a phone message seeking comment Thursday.

The
university said then that its internal drug-testing policy requires all
freshman or new transfer student athletes to take a drug test “within a
reasonable amount of time” after arriving on campus. All teams that
qualify for postseason play also may be subject to testing. The
indictment stemmed from an original federal complaint filed in June that
accused 25 people and included only one count. The new charges
including conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 5 kilograms of
cocaine and 1,000 kilos of marijuana, conspiracy to commit money laundering and unlawful possession of firearms.

In announcing the
indictment Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's office said in a release that
two Lawrence residents, Los Rovell Dahda, 30, and Chad Eugene Bauman,
33, “made millions” leading the drug ring. Lawyers listed in online
court records as representing Dahda and Bauman did not immediately
return phone messages left Thursday evening. Prosecutors are
seeking additional penalties for several of the defendants for
distributing drugs within 1,000 feet of high schools, a middle school
and Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence from about 2005 to
2012. They're also asking a judge to order the forfeiture of $16.9
million in cash and real estate they allege was gained from the scheme.

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